Undertale just got its first big update, and at first glance it doesn’t seem like much. Players, however, have begun picking it apart like hungry vultures, and they’ve already found some interesting stuff.

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This post originally ran on 1/20/16. It’s been updated with more secrets.

For a while now, Undertale creator Toby Fox has been adamant that any updates to the role-playing sensation will probably be in the name of tweaks/bugfixes—not significant helpings of new content. And yet, it appears that he decided to sprinkle a few scraps throughout the game’s first update—some of which hint at the possibility of more in the future.

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(Warning: BIG Undertale spoilers ahead.)

OK so, by now plenty of people have finished Undertale, but only a select few have pushed beneath the game’s surface—picked over its bones—in an attempt to uncover the true nature of its world. These dataminers have been rewarded with a breadcrumb trail that seems to point to a character named Gaster, who many speculate is somehow related to bad joke skeleton bros Sans and Papyrus. He is, many believe, trapped outside the bounds of space and time due to an experiment gone wrong. Despite this, there are still traces of him scattered through the game’s world and code in the form of gray NPCs, hidden rooms, and things of the like.

It’s believed that he has an especially strong connection to Sans—that the machine in Sans’ secret workshop might be the invention that turned Gaster into a spray of paste across the lens of the game’s reality. This (finally) brings us to the biggest discovery in the recent update: new dialogue in Sans’ lab. Here it is, courtesy of kiwikiwi591:

Speculation says the three people in the picture are Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster, and the picture says “don’t forget” because it’s the only way Sans can remember Gaster after he Houdini-ed out of existence. Other speculation is similar, only instead of Papyrus, some think one of the figures is Alphys—science pals instead of skeleton bros, basically.

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There are more big changes associated with Gaster as well. A sound file commonly associated with him is different now—arguably creepier. Perhaps most significant of all, dataminers have found that the “fun” values in the game files associated with Gaster’s appearance have changed. Before, you had to tamper with your files to find the character people believe to be Gaster or evidence associated with him. Now there’s apparently an extremely slight chance that his room will appear at a specific point in the game sans tampering. So basically, if all of this is true/intentional, Gaster (or whoever this character is) is canon now. Perhaps it was always intended to be that way, or perhaps this is Fox’s way of throwing a bone to an extremely specific, tirelessly ardent part of Undertale’s fandom.

The implication of all this is that seems to be that Fox wants to add some new stuff—the fight against the dog, at the very least—but he’s got fixes and things of the like to polish up first, and that’s gonna take a while. Or maybe he’ll just never get around to it. We’ll see.

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Right now, people are still in the process of uncovering tweaks and changes, so the full breadth of this patch remains to be seen. It’s certainly got Undertale fans poking, prodding, and talking, though. And when this community gets going, well... probably expect to hear more in the coming days. And weeks. And maybe months.

Update 1/25/2016, 6PM: Undertale’s stupendously dedicated fanbase has, of course, been on a non-stop secret hunt since the latest version of Undertale dropped. They’ve found all sorts of little things since I first wrote this post. Let’s bite into this juicy secret sandwich, shall we?

Papyrus got lots of interesting new dialogue. If you call him while in Alphys’ lab, he recognizes a bag of dog food, having apparently seen it in Sans’ room. This could imply a couple things: 1) a closer friendship between Alphys and Sans than the game initially lets on, and that 2) Sans might have known about the True Lab where much of Undertale’s big pacifist ending takes place.

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There’s also new dialogue if you do a genocide run up to Papyrus, then spare him and hang out at his place in the desecrated shell of Snowdin (which is, you know, a totally normal thing to do). If you check out the box of bones in his room, he goes on about the special attack he could’ve used on you. He talks about “blasting” you, which some speculate is a reference to Gaster Blaster, Sans’ special attack. This would tie Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster together even more than, well, everything else already has.

On the lighter side of things, players also uncovered new dialogue for Burgerpants, the probably high-as-fuck cat man working in the fast food restaurant in Mettaton’s resort near the end of the game. He asks you to help him prepare for an outing, only to describe his, um, atypical relationship with Mettaton. Apparently the megalomaniacal robot pop star calls him into his office and has him put on outfits for... reasons. “Anyways, I won’t sweat it,” Burgerpants concludes. “I’ll take it casual. NEVER let hot people think you care. That’s how they get you.”

If you find more secrets or easter eggs, feel free to let me know in the comments or on Twitter. I plan to keep this post updated as people uncover more stuff (if, indeed, there’s any more stuff to uncover).

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